In Maintal, the municipality is working on a new built disctrict to cater the needs of the growing population. For the new district, an Energy Concept is under construction that includes an economic feasibility analysis, providing the basis for deciding whether an Plus-Energy-District can be realized.

Grid stability is now high on the agenda, especially as the transition to renewable energy sources brings new challenges, such as balancing demand and identifying future demand growth. Especially when much of it is hidden behind customers' meters, as is the case with rooftop solar.

These challenges can be partially met with the help of the WHY Toolkit. The WHY partnership is now looking forward to implement the “Maintal use case” to demonstrate the possibilities for using the WHY toolkit in an urban planning context. In this use case, the WHY toolkit can demonstrate one of its main strengths, namely the finely granulated simulation of household consumption, and thus provide the data basis for a more detailed examination of the consumption side.

Help us by providing your insight! If we understand what motivates citizens and consumers to make decisions such as changing their heating system, we can design solution that drive the renewable energy transitions faster.

Several research projects joined their forces to assess what makes someone decide on investing in renewable energy and thus become an active participant in the renewable energy transition. We would like to understand how citizens and consumers decide. We count on you who know your community best to provide us insights.

Take your time, grab a coffe and imagine....

Imagine that you are one of these citizens and click below to fill in our survey!

The main characteristics of the energy community that is testing and using the WHY tools

The energy community use cases consist of two completely different examples. On the one hand, we have a more traditional top-down Energy Community where a public authority gives away some space in public buildings to install PV panels. The production is then shared among the members of the energy community.

The second example, on the other hand, is a bottom-up approach. In this case, building owners in a neighborhood have shown interest in going beyond their regular management obligations and considering a more holistic approach to energy consumption in their buildings. For this end, they have created a refurbishment plan which includes becoming an Energy Community at some point.

Have you missed our Workshop on Energy Communities?

Were you busy at the time of ECEMP'22? No problem! We have all recordings and downloadables for you at one place! With a very busy 2022 around the topic energy, a variety of events took place organised by WHY and partners. Have a look at the event recordings and download relevant presentations and papers.

Recommendations for better design of energy-demand modeling based on policy makers’ needs:

newTRENDs seeks to recognize and model the influence of New Societal Trends on energy demand, and hence develop scenarios of their future development. Emerging New Societal Trends will certainly have a significant impact on how we live, move, produce, work, and therefore use energy. Considering the current environmental crises, it must be ensured that these trends do not have negative consequences for the environment, and on the contrary, lead to reduced energy consumption of energy and raw material. To reach this goal, this report and policy brief provide policy-driven and policy makers’ needs driven recommendations for energy demand-side models.

NUDGE is set up to analyse people’s behaviour, design and test nudging interventions in five EU Member States in households, energy communities and schools. In NUDGE, a broad range of methodologies, tools and approaches are used: field experiments and surveys, qualitative and quantitative research methods, stakeholder consultation as well as automated and manual collection of pilot data.Most of the research and experimentation is focused on the design of policies and the formulation of recommendations specific to each country and consumer profile!

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